Lincoln Hunter Web Log

Longevity means outliving your value

2012-02-11T13:30:00.000-05:00

An article (or column) from the Baltimore Sun was syndicated into the Palm Beach Post, a newspaper I read each day. The author of this article is Susan Reimer. The title of her piece is "Longevity happier in theory than in practice."
Ms Reimer relates crosscountry conversations with close friends whose mothers are very old and no longer functioning normally. The conversation drifts into other personal talk but Reimer brings them back to discussing the end of life.
"We shouldn't be planning vacations," she says. "We should be working on exit strategies. The one of us who still has it together needs to promise to mix the pills in the applesauce for the ones who don't."
Serious stuff. But then Reimer presents some facts. In her own words:

"More of us are living longer and dying slower. Estimates are that 70 percent of us will need some kind of residential care in the final years of life, and few of us have the savings or the insurance to pay for it - about $75,000 a year in a nursing home and about $20,000 a year for home care. (It is not either/or. And almost all of us who have home care will eventually need nursing home care.)
"The CLASS Act, part of the health care reform legislation of 2010, would have provided long-term care insurance for anyone who wanted to buy it, regardless of age or health. But it was withdrawn last month when the Obama administration realized that it was wildly unaffordable.
"Private insurers appear to have made the same actuarial mistakes and are asking for permission to increase premiuns on policies they have already sold by 40 percent. Some companies are getting out of the long-term care insurance business altogether.
The assumption that many of us have - that Medicare will pay for our care when we are both old and sick - is wrong. Medicare only pays for short nursing home stays or short-term at-home care, under certain medical conditions.
"It is Medicaid that is bankrupting itself to pay these costs - and most of us are only eligible after we have drained our savings. None of us wants to face up to end-of-life issues, let alone pay up thousands of dollars a year in premiums for long-term care insurance.
"And we can't seem to talk about any alternatives to prolonging even the most painful or undiginified life."

Tough stuff, that. In just a few paragraphs we have an outline of a serious national problem that will only worsen as more people continue to 'live longer and die slower.'
Please note that I write "national problem" because it can't be solved in any piecemeal helter-skelter way. The favorite comeback of those who won't face reality is to speak of extended care in the family. Oh if it were only so. But the extended family of old is as rare as the two-parent, one-salary family of old.
Matters are made worse by new medical discoveries and technologies which extend the life of a terminal patient years past the natural time of death that was more common in the long ago.
Today's politicians are full of talk about costs and how health care expenses are out of control.
I wonder, is "health care' the right phrase to use when discussing the cost of servicing terminally ill patients?
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Bad Timing

2012-02-04T09:00:00.001-05:00

Last week, CBS Newsman Scott Pelley interviewed Tomas Regalado, the mayor of Miami, Florida. During the interview, the Mayor said "Miami is what the United States will be 25 years from now."

This week, Forbes magazine issued its annual list of the ten Most Miserable Cities in the U.S. Number one is the city of Miami, Florida.

I hope one of them is wrong.
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Albert Jay Nock - A prophet?

2012-01-23T11:51:00.000-05:00

Eighty years ago (1931) the conservative philosopher Albert Nock made an observation. He believed that America was trying to force the current of its being through the narrow channel of one instinct only: the instinct of acquisition and expansion, resulting in a society that

"must inevitably be characterized by a low type of intellect, a grotesque type of religion, a facticious type of morals, an imperfect type of beauty, and an imperfect type of social life and manners. In a word, it is uncivilized."

Reading that again, I was reminded of this injunction from Wendell Berry:
"We must achieve the character, and acquire the skills, to live much poorer than we do."
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Ivan Illich - Wisdom

2012-01-19T12:20:00.000-05:00

"The machine-like behavior of people chained to electronics constitutes a degradation of their well-being and of their dignity which, for most people in the long run, becomes intolerable. Observations of the sickening effect of programmed environments shows that people in them become indolent, impotent, narcissistic and apolitical. The political process breaks down because people cease to be able to govern themselves; they demand to be managed."
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Conspiracy Not Required

2012-01-05T00:00:00.000-05:00

The slow steady erosion of personal freedoms, the increased acceptance of 'security measures', the diminishing life of our Republic: these changes do not have to be, and are most likely not, a result of some huge conspiracy by the power brokers of the world. It can happen gradually, a social evolution that simply makes it seem necessary, advisable, probably a good idea.
In 1977, Jerry Mander wrote an brave and good book called "Four Arguments For The Elimination Of Television". Of course, the hoped-for elimination never occurred, nor will it. Still, it is a useful book to read if you are one who senses and regrets the losses our nation has suffered in the past six or seven decades.

Mander cites the movie Solaris as an example of what may be the future. He speaks about the Soviet version directed by Andre Tarkovski, not the 2002 version directed by Steven Soderbergh.
In Solaris, technology is used "to produce autocracy not so much deliberate and conscious as it is evolutionary.
"As technology has evolved, step by step, it has placed boundaries between human beings and their connections with larger, nonhuman realities. As life acquired ever more technological wrapping, human experience and understanding were confined and altered. In Solaris these changes happen in a nonspecific order over time, until people's minds and living patterns are so disconnected that there is no way of knowing reality from fantasy. At such a point, there is no choice but to accept leadership, however arbitrary.
"Such leadership may very well not plan its own success. It emerges organically at the moment when human experience has been sufficiently channeled and confined. In this cultural analogue of mass sensory deprivation, simple, clear statements assume a greater authority and profundity than they deserve.
"Whoever recognizes that such a crucial moment has arrived, that people's minds are appropriately confused and receptive, can speak directly into them without interference. The people who are spoken to are preconditioned to accept what they hear, like the Solaris astronauts...."
Mander goes on to say "Technology plays a critical role in this process because it creates standardized arbitrary forms of physical and mental confinement. Television is the ideal tool for such purposes because it both confines experience and implants simple, clear ideas.

"Seen in this way, a new fact emerges. Autocracy needn't come in the form of a person at all, or even as an articulated ideology or conscious conspiracy. (italics mine) The autocracy can exist in the technology itself. The technology can produce its own subordinated society, as though it were alive, like Solaris"
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On fatalism

2011-12-31T10:20:00.000-05:00

The worst type of fatalism is the elegant kind dispensed by the wealthy upon the poor.
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Paul Krugman deceives, Part 1

2011-12-18T18:02:00.000-05:00

A recent column by Paul Krugman left me asking a question of myself. Is Mr. Krugman trying to deceive his readers or is this just one more superficial column written to meet a deadline?
The column is an attack on Ron Paul's views on economics. The core principle of that view is the concept that printed money must be backed by gold. Mr. Paul is opposed to "fiat money" or "monetary expansion" as practiced by the Federal Reserve since the early 1970's when the gold standard was abandoned.
Mr. Krugman points out that the "Federal Reserve doesn't actually print money (the Treasury does that). But the Fed does control the "monetary base," the sum of bank reserves and currency in circulation. (italics mine) So when people talk about Mr. Bernanke printing money, what they really mean is that the Fed expanded the monetary base."
I conclude this means that the Fed, using reserves and currency in circulation, i.e., existing, already printed, "lends large sums to banks as well as buying a wide range of other assests in a (successful) attempt to stabilize financial markets, in the process adding large amounts to bank reserves.
Did you get that subtle tail of 9 words tacked to the end: 'in the process adding large amounts to bank reserves?'
Mr. Krugman ends the paragraph with this: "The combined effect of these actions was that the monetary base more than tripled in size."
I know that Mr. Krugman is trained in economics. His work is recognized and read around the world. Indeed, he has won the Nobel Prize for Economics. So why doesn't he explain how the Fed, without printing more money, can triple the size of the monetary base?
I conclude that Ron Paul is correct. The monetary base is 'expanded' by fiat money. Fiat is a latin term which means "let it be so." Mr. Bernanke, finding the Fed needs trillions of dollars to stabilize the economy, says "Let it be so" and, magically, money is 'loaned', 'sent out', or 'transferred' as required or needed. Thus the monetary base is expanded.
My dictionary defines 'expand' as "to increase dimensions of; cause to swell or distend."
It then cites a quote from Virginia Woolf as an illustration: "One's perceptions blowout rapidly like air balls expanded by some rush of air."
How appropriate.
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Quotation

2011-12-17T09:51:00.000-05:00

"When a man can't piss in his own front yard, he's living too close to town."

Edward Abbey
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Why hazing?

2011-12-17T07:38:00.001-05:00

I do not understand the need nor use of hazing. Never did. As a child I read about hazing in books (Tarkington?). Usually it was mild fraternity hi-jinks. Still I thought it stupid and an assault on one's self-respect.
There are two instances where hazing or its equivalent is purposeful.
The first is Basic Training for military service. The purpose is to break down the individuality and personhood of each enlistee, resulting in people ready to accept orders without question.
The second is the initiation rite of different tribal cultures, such as the native American Indian. These are rites overseen by a shaman and with a purpose benefitting the tribe and the individual together.
Every other version of hazing is just stupid human behavior which occasionally results in physical injury or worse, i.e., manslaughter.
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A Good Laugh is hard to find

2011-12-15T14:27:00.000-05:00

An Observation

2011-12-10T15:34:00.001-05:00

A superpower is the antithesis of conservatism.
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An Observation

2011-11-29T20:41:00.001-05:00

Looking back over the past eleven years and the events that have comprised the news during that time, I have come to the following conclusion:

The cream doesn't rise to the top anymore.
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Vachel Lindsay and Johnny Appleseed

2011-11-23T06:36:00.001-05:00

For me, Thanksgiving has become a day to give thanks for what we used to have.

The Apple-Barrel of Johnny Appleseed
by Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931)

On the mountain peak, called 'Going-To-The-Sun,'
I saw gray Johnny Appleseed at prayer
Just as the sunset made the old earth fair,
Then darkness came; in an instant, like great smoke,
The sun fell down as though its great hoops broke
And dark rich apples, poured from the dim flame
Where the sun set, came rolling toward the peak,
A storm of fruit, a mighty cider-reek,
The perfume of the orchards of the world,
From apple-shadows: red and russet domes
That turned to clouds of glory and strange homes
Above the mountain tops for cloud-born souls: --
Reproofs for men who build the world like moles,
Models for men, if they would build the world
As Johnny Appleseed would have it done -
Praying, and reading the books of Swedenborg
On the mountain top called 'Going-To-The-Sun.'
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The Hungry Years

2011-11-20T16:37:00.001-05:00

I began my adult working life as a construction laborer. Over a span of several years I did many different tasks, some challenging, some not so. Whenever my work ethic got me promoted to foreman, I still worked, instead of standing around looking boss-like.
I enjoyed being outdoors. I enjoyed using my muscles, my body. I loved acquiring new skills, such as dynamiting rock ledges, rock drilling, welding, operating machinery, etc.
In the summer of 1964, I supervised the installation of a chair lift at a local ski area. I borrowed a transit from an engineer I knew. From a friend I borrowed a book on navigation by Bowditch and, using the trig tables in that book, I set the towers in a perfect true line and at the right elevation.
Somewhere in there I got married and a son was born. There wasn't lots of money. We had a six year old Ford Fairlane. We rented for a time, then purchased a small house using two mortgages. The furnace was the old style gravity air unit with a large grille in the living room floor as the only source of heat.
There are more tales to tell, but I am trying to say that, like most people, I left work I loved in order to "do better." Taking office work in the field of construction, I wore a suit and tie. Again I did well, and, in time, was offered the vice-presidency. I took it. Big mistake. Life was never the same. Having made a committment, I gave the job my best. But I became sealed off forever from turning back, even in my imagination.
I regret it still, and I miss the hungry years:

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About Penn State

2011-11-10T20:28:00.001-05:00

Some thoughts about the scandal at Penn State:

A man rapes a ten year old boy in a shower room. Another man observes but walks away.
Both men had choices. The choices they made were evil. The choices that each man made did not concern the boy. The rapist satisfied his need. The coward was torn about his duty as a member of an organization that included the rapist.
One wonders: if the rapist had been a stranger, someone not associated with the university, would the observer have walked away? We'll never know.
The most important thing to remember here is the Child.   Children have no power. Their worth is minimal in situations like this. I have posted about abuse of children before, here and here That kind of crime is as old as the human race and will be with us forever or until we stupidly agree to be genetically and eugenically modified for 'the greater good.'
Homo homini lupus est, said a Roman, millenia ago. "Man is a wolf to man." Power is the source, and the motive.
One wonders, too, how these men, the coach, the assistant coaches, the university administration, went about their daily business knowing what they knew. What did they say to each other? What feelings did they suppress? What face, what mask did they wear?
People wonder about the institutional and personal failure to react as required by what we define as normal human behavior as well as the requirements of our laws. How did this happen? Why didn't the hammer of justice come down hard at the discovery of the first instance of abuse?
This is the way of the world. Institutions protect their own.   It is the way of the world.
Now there will be lectures on the need to have or improve ethics training.  Such talk is busy work for frightened minds. Most people know the difference between right and wrong.

It might be more useful to consider this:
The last 60 years have seen steroidal growth, an over-development of all institutions that are supposed to enrich, regulate and direct this society toward high aims and useful outcomes. The field of athletics, of sports, of games, of adult play has grown into a multi-million dollar industry and into a monstrous domain of money, zealous adulation, mis-placed power, and corruption of the soul.
Restore football to its original purpose as a college sport. Restore the coach to his original position of teacher of rules, of training, of goals, of sportsmanship. Restore football to the game. It is not a religion. College football is not for making money.

Consider this from an interview with Guy Davenport:
"The high schools are evidently teaching nothing. I was getting students who had read nothing, knew nothing, and thought the university existed for the sake of the Kentucky Wildcats. It's shortsighted of Disney not to have built an amusement park: College World, with fraternities, sororities, sports, endless partying, but no classes or libraries or labs. It would not be appreciably different."
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Too big to fail, BUT NOT too big to jail

2011-11-07T20:22:00.000-05:00

Tonight, on CBS News, Mr. Jack Bogle, founder and CEO of the Vanguard Mutual Trust Fund (the largest mutual fund in the country) stated that "wire tapping" and "more law enforcement" were required to correct the abuses of Wall Street. He believes there has to be "punishment" to make people change.
If someone from OWS spoke like this, blogs and pundits by the score would be ridiculing and condemning this as class warfare, socialism, crazy, and more.
I find it heartening to learn that there are major financiers who know that greed and fraud are killing the American economy. I wish more of them would speak out or write op-ed columns.
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Filibuster or cowardice?

2011-11-03T20:15:00.001-04:00

When a vote in the Senate of the United States is 51 to 49, the side with 51 votes wins and the bill is passed.
No, I'm told, that is the way it used to be. Now the opposition uses the threat of a filibuster and the victory disappears.
This is an expression of intellectual dishonesty and abdication of duty.
I believe that the Senate should force the opposition to filibuster rather than cave in and accept it as a foregone conclusion. Make the opposition talk and talk and talk until the nation has had enough of it and sees who needs to be replaced or forces the opposition to give up and accept the will of the majority who voted for the bill.
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On Reading Wallace Stevens

2011-11-01T19:23:00.000-04:00

    Sometimes I find poetry by Wallace Stevens very challenging. To understand his work, I write it out in prose. This provides a perspective to understand his intention.
Recently I wrote out in prose the Stevens poem titled "The Men That Are Falling." When done, I was struck by how effective the writing seemed.   My understanding of the poem in this form surpassed any pleasure I had found in its original structure. I was reminded of the stories of Joseph Conrad. The words seemed to have more heat.

Then I got the idea of posting the prose form to see if anyone could mis-identify the original writer. Of course, it got ID'd rather quickly by Frank Wilson of Books, Inq. (See comments below.)

Here is the poem in prose, followed by the poem in its original poetic form. Please read both and see what you think.

"Gods and all angels sing the world to sleep, now that the moon is rising in the heat and crickets are loud again in the grass. The moon burns in the mind on last remembrances.
     He lies down and the night wind blows upon him here. The bells grow longer. This is not sleep. This is desire. Ah! Yes, desire...this leaning on his bed, this leaning on his elbows on his bed, staring, at midnight, at the pillow that is black in the catastrophic room...beyond despair, life an intenser instinct. What is it he desires? But this he cannot know, the man that thinks, yet life itself, the fulfillment of desire to the grinding ric-rac, staring steadily at a head upon the pillow in the dark, more than sudarium, speaking the speech of desolates, bodiless, a head thick-lipped from riot and rebellious cries, the head of one of the men that are falling, placed upon the pillow to repose and speak, speak and say the immaculate syllables that he spoke only by doing what he did.
     God and all angels, this was his desire, whose head lies blurring here, for this he died. Taste of the blood upon his martyred lips, O pensioners, O demagogues and pay-men! This death was his belief though death is a stone. This man loved earth, not heaven, enough to die. The night wind blows upon the dreamer, bent over words that are life's voluble utterance."

The Men that Are Falling

Gods and all angels sing the world to sleep,
Now that the moon is rising in the heat

And crickets are loud again in the grass. The moon
Burns in the mind on lost remembrances.

He lies down and the night wind blows upon him here,
The bells grow longer. This is not sleep. This is desire.

Ah! Yes, desire...this leaning on his bed,
This leaning on his elbows on his bed,

Staring, at midnight, at the pillow that is black
In the catastrophic room...beyond despair,

Like an intenser instinct. What is it he desires?
But this he cannot know, the man that thinks,

Yet life itslf, the fulfillment of desire
In the grinding ric-rac, staring steadily

At a head upon the pillow in the dark,
More than sudarium, speaking the speech

Of absolutes, bodiless, a head
Thick-lipped from riot and rebellious cries,

The head of one of the men that are falling, placed
Upon the pillow to repose and speak,

Speak and say the immaculate syllables
That he spoke only by doing what he did.

God and all angels, this was his desire,
Whose head lies blurring here, for this he died.

Taste of the blood upon his martyred lips,
O pensioners, O demagogues and pay-men!

This death was his belief though death is a stone.
This man loved earth, no heaven, enough to die.

The night wind blows upon the dreamer, bent
Over words that are life's valuable utterance.

(Which form is more effective for you?)
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A Reckoning

2011-11-01T09:39:00.000-04:00

The hated are dead.
The field is clear.
Yet pain lives on,
No answer here.
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T S Eliot offers some wisdom

2011-10-31T07:48:00.002-04:00

"We are being made aware that the organization of society on the principle of private profit, as well as public destruction, is leading both to the deformation of humanity by unregulated industrialism, and to the exhaustion of natural resources, and that a good deal of our material progress is a progress for which succeeding generations may have to pay dearly. I need only mention, as an instance now very much before the public eye, the results of 'soil-erosion' - the exploitation of the earth, on a vast scale for two generations, for commercial profit: immediate benefits leading to dearth and desert...A wrong attitude towards nature implies, somewhere, a wrong attitude toward God, and the consequence is an inevitable doom. For a long enough time we have believed in nothing but the values arising in a mechanized, commercialized, urbanized way of life: it would be as well for us to face the permanent conditions upon which God allows us to live upon this planet.'

-T. S. Eliot, "The Idea of a Christian Society" (1940)

Wars of Liberation

2011-10-29T20:45:00.000-04:00

Does anyone remember when the Soviet Union recommended starting Wars of Liberation around the world?
Remember how our government condemned these dangerous activities?
Now the Soviet Union is no more, and the United States of America is promoting Wars of Liberation.
What happened? Did I miss something?
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You see? Just like I said… Nicholas Carr thinks so, too.

2011-10-21T13:03:00.000-04:00

You see? Just like I said… Nicholas Carr thinks so, too.

Barney Frank doesn't get it.

2011-10-18T09:57:00.000-04:00

Last night I listened to Barney Frank's comments on the Occupy Wall Street protest.
Rep. Frank stated that the protestors can't effect change by gathering in a park with signs and verbal outrage. He urged them to get busy working to elect people who will make the changes they seek.
Yeah, right. And they should write their congressman, too.
For decades I have been voting for change and seeing nothing change except for the worse.
How often have I voted while holding my nose?
How often have I said that my choice is for the 'lesser of two evils?'
The majority of Americans voted for change when they voted for Obama. Did they get it? No.
What is required is the making of a third party.
But this is virtually impossible. The two major parties, Democrat & Republican, are as one in seeing that the game is stacked against this ever happening. Neither wants to give up the wealth and power they enjoy.
I see now that the Democratic party is the enemy.
The Republican party can't change. It represents the Far Right and about 20% of the population have a recessive caveman gene that will always be there.
The Democratic party is the logical choice but they have sold out and lost their way.
The protestors should make their objective to be the building of a third party. They should demand the right to have one by using non-violent passive resistance if necessary.
The largest voting bloc in America today consists of people outside the two party structure. This group consists of the Independents and the People Who Stopped Voting For Anyone.
If these two groups could be persuaded to join a new party, change could truly come to America.

Aaarrhgh!!!

2011-10-13T14:22:00.000-04:00

Many important people are upset about the alleged attempt to arrange an assassination of the Saudi ambassador on U.S. soil. Many self-important people are upset, also.
I don't like it either. But I can't quite feel the outrage that infects Hillary Clinton and Bill O'Reilly, for example.
I don't forget our history. I remember the assassination of Orlando Letelier, former Chilean ambassador to the U.S., who was riding in an automobile with his assistant Ronni Moffitt, and the driver, Ronni's husband, Michael Moffitt. The car was blown up as it traveled through Washington D.C.. Letelier & Mrs. Moffitt were killed. Michael Moffitt was injured. The assassination was order by General Pinochet, the dictator of Chile, and our ally.
The American government was properly 'horrified' by this incident and 'condemned' it in the 'strongest possible language.'
But no one wanted to take action against Chile or invoke sanctions. Why? Because Chile was the main player in Operation Condor which consisted of a group of Latin American right-wing dictators who plotted to kill communist and socialist politicians whom they opposed. The United States performed a 'supervisory role' in Operation Condor which is a euphemism for providing money, training, support and a target list.
In recent years the United States has assassinated people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Pakistan and continues to do so.
We violate national boundaries and international law on a daily basis. We no longer operate from the moral high ground. America is losing its soul. It makes me sick at heart to say that. But I won't lie to myself about it.
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Philip Larkin, The Old Fools

2011-10-10T15:59:00.000-04:00

When you are as old as I am (and feel), that is, older than Olduvai, you will really appreciate this poem by Philip Larkin.

THE OLD FOOLS

What do they think has happened, the old fools,
to make them like this? Do they somehow suppose
it's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,
and you keep on pissing yourself, and you can't remember
who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose,
they could alter things back to when they could dance all night,
or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September?
Or do they fancy there's really been no change,
and they've always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,
or sat through days of thin continous dreaming
watching light move? If they don't (and they can't) it's strange:
                          Why aren't they screaming?

At death you break up: the bits that were you
start speeding away from each other for ever
with no one to see. It's only oblivion, true:
we had it before, but then it was going to end,
and was all the time merging with a unique endeavour
to bring to bloom the million-petalled flower
of being here. Next time you can't pretend
there'll be anything else. And these are the first signs:
now knowing how, not hearing who, the power
of choosing gone. Their looks show that they're for it:
ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines -
                        How can they ignore it?

Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms
inside your head, and people in them, acting.
People you know, yet can't quite name; each looms
like a deep loss restored, from known doors turning,
setting down a lamp, smiling from a stair, extracting
a known book from the shelves, or sometimes only
the rooms themselves, chair and a fire burning,
the blown bush at the window, or the sun's
faint friendliness on the wall some lonely
rain-ceased mid-summer evening. That is where they live
not here and now but where all happened once.
                           That is why they give

an air of baffled absence, trying to be there
yet being here. For the rooms grow farther, leaving,
incompetent cold the constant wear and tear
of taken breath, and them crouching below
extinction's alp, the old fools, never perceiving
how near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet:
the peak that stays in view wherever we go
for them is rising ground. Can they never tell
what is dragging them back, and how it will end? Not at night?
Not when the strangers come? Never, throughout
the whole hideous inverted childhood? Well,
                               we shall find out.
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The Puritan Dilemma

2011-10-05T10:03:00.001-04:00

A Tragedy in 38 Words.

Girls aroused his interest when he was young. But he never asked them out. He did not see girls as persons. He wished only to fuck them. Since his motives were impure, he could not ask them out.

Burkean Wisdom

2011-10-05T10:03:00.000-04:00

"Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral claims upon their own appetites, in proportion as their love of justice is above rapacity......Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without."
Edmund Burke

Question

2011-09-20T16:45:00.000-04:00

Death, I'm told, is part of Life,
a mere continuation.
Then why is that sky so blue?
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Play Time

2011-07-11T14:52:00.002-04:00

Email Zola.
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Observation

2011-07-10T17:11:00.000-04:00

Ogres, whether fictional or real, are the most self-satisfied people you will ever see.
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Light Show

2011-07-10T13:53:00.001-04:00

Mark Twain observed that if the stars appeared only once a year, on that night the whole world would step outside to see them.
Of course this was before man polluted the night with excessive light.
Some years ago a comet appeared in the sky. There was much media hoopla. When asked if I was excited about the comet, I replied "Yes, but I would be happy just to see the Milky Way again."

The stars once gave us signs,
shapes to see, myths to find.
Orion's belt is now our share,
half a fighter standing there
looking for a vanished bear.

Beneath the night's soft shade
a quiet and untroubled glade
abides with dreams of home and place
to calm the sad and puzzled face
of man and his sinful ways.
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Question

2011-07-02T16:59:00.002-04:00

How much of our loss is surrender?
Do we truly 'lose' or do we give it away?
Or maybe we just let it go?
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Belief versus Fact

2011-06-27T20:42:00.000-04:00

A disturbing fact about human beings is: People believe the opposite of what they know to be true.

This fact has been true for the masses for God knows how long.
This fact explains why people act against their own interests.
But I felt that our institutions (government, religious, educational, corporate) were managed by people who could actively control the intellectual clash between belief and truth.
I don't feel that way now.
One listens and reads, looking for signs that the President, the Congress, the bankers and corporate leaders, and university presidents understand what is happening and know what to do. I find no signs.

Peter DeVries nailed it in 1961 when he wrote "What people believe is a measure of what they suffer."
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Calf Slobber Pie

2011-06-22T10:50:00.000-04:00

Overheard at the Duck & Cover Restaurant, home of the Scratch & Sniff Menu:

What do you like for dessert?
I'll have some calf slobber pie.
A pause, then - Never heard of it.
Well, you've got some right there in the case.
Show me.
He points.
That is called Lemon Meringue.
Well, back home, we call it calf slobber.

Ever heard of Chris Hedges? Well, get acquainted.

2011-06-18T21:08:00.000-04:00

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_the_united_states_is_destroying_her_education_system_20110410/

Quotation For Today

2011-06-14T20:10:00.000-04:00

Under the Republicans, man exploits man. With the Democrats, just the opposite is true.

Anonymous Bumper Sticker
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Capitalism and Education in Partnership

2011-06-11T17:14:00.000-04:00

Last week we had dinner with friends at a local restaurant. Halfway through the meal, the woman next to me turned to complain about the workers who were coming to her house to do repairs or maintenance. It was not the quality of the work that bothered her; it was her inability to communicate and perhaps relate to them. All were foreign immigrants. "Where are 'our boys'?" she asked me.
In a civilized world I would have formed an answer for her but in the world where I live, a world where restaurants cannot provide a meal without loud music cascading from the ceiling, a world where fellow diners talk as if they were on cable talk shows, I did no more than shrug my shoulders and say "It's a problem."
Here is what I wanted to say:
American Society has spent at least three generations teaching our young people that manual labor is an endeavor that must be avoided. It is demeaning and unpleasant to work with one's hands. We told our children they can do better than that. They didn't need to 'waste their lives' when they could get a college education and do 'so much better.' We fed them TV programs, movies, and stories about fathers who were ashanmed of their jobs and wanted their children to have it better. Fathers were telling their sons to get an education so they didn't have to work in the mines, or fix automobiles, or labor on a farm. These stories told us that these fathers were sacrificing their happiness so their children could have a better easier life. Teachers and counselors reinforced these admonitions.
So we have millions unemployed who have never used a tool and can't fix things to earn money. Or won't.
I might have asked if she didn't see it happening.
I also might have inquired exactly what picture came to her mind when she spoke of 'our boys.'
But she is in her mid-eighties. Not enough time left to do or care anything about it. I know this because I am only a few years behind where she is now.
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Wikileaks under fire again.

2011-06-11T15:15:00.000-04:00

If you like to watch Television News as presented by CNN in the belief that you are watching an objective truth-seeking program based on integrity and facts, then you may not enjoy the hatchet job that will be done on June 12, Sunday at 8:00 PM on CNN.
Titled "Wikiwars: The Mission of Julian Assange", it is little more than a rehash of old rumours mixed with inaccuracies and detailed revelations of Assange's personal bodily features and personality idiosyncrasies. Qualities we all have, by the way.
This is not surprising. CNN has tried to denigrate Assange from the beginning. Along with the New York Times and some other publications, they are an organ of the American Government and do the bidding of same.
The question I have is: why Assange right now, at this time? Is it another "pre-emptive strike" that our Government is so famous for doing?
More likely, it just time to renew the lesson of the dangers of truth-telling and whistle-blowing to the American people.
A digression here: I wish an enterprising reporter would research who was the first person to use 'pre-emptive strike' to justify putting the country at war without following constitutional procedure.
I bet most people think it means to strike first. My understanding is that pre-emption means the seizing of public lands within one's own nation.
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Katie Couric walks away.

2011-06-10T10:05:00.000-04:00

Katie Couric has signed off as CBS Evening News anchor after nearly five years. Couric ended her last evening newscast by telling viewers:

"Thank you so much for coming along with me on this incredible journey."

Well, isn't that precious? Five years is an 'incredible journey'?

Walter Kronkite didn't become Walter Kronkite in five years. He began with CBS in 1950 after a dozen years of reporting around the world. He was assigned anchor of the CBS Evening News in 1962 and stayed until his retirement in 1981 (19 years as anchor).
Tom Brokaw stayed until he retired.
Peter Jennings stayed until he died.
When Couric got the assignment in 2006, there was a lot of chatter about her being the first solo female anchor of a primetime network newscast.
She will go down in the history books with that distinction but she doesn't deserve it. She quit. She walked away. The so-called 'challenge' of her 'incredible journey' wore out and she moved on because in the end, everything she does is about her. That is the modern way.
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Quote of the Day

2011-05-07T09:54:00.001-04:00

"How much more convenient do you want to make it? You want to go to the house? Take the polling booth with us? I wouldn't have any problem making it harder. I would want them to vote as badly as I want to vote. I want the people of the state of Florida to want to vote as bad as that person in Africa who's willing to walk 200 miles...This should not be easy."

Mike Bennett, R-Bradenton, after the Republican legislature passed a bill making the voting process more difficult and complicated.
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Economy 101

2011-05-06T12:43:00.001-04:00

Once upon a time we made our own tools. With these tools we made the things we needed: our house, our barn, our clothes, our food. We made things to sell and trade and use.
Then someone told us that they could make the tools we need faster and more cheaply than we could do it ourselves. We could purchase these tools for a small price and have more time to make things we need and things we sell.
Then someone told us that they could make the things we need faster and more cheaply than we could do it ourselves. We could purchase these things for a small price and have more time to do other things. Since we had become quite accustomed to letting others do what we can do on our own and accustomed to paying them to do it for us, we found this new offer easier to accept.
Now we had the task of selling and trading things that others made. This was more necessary because we had to have money to buy what we needed since we no longer made these things ourselves.
What surprise to learn that our neighbor was facing the same problem, and a great many other people as well. So much competition meant that no one person could sell or trade enough to support their necessities. They looked for solutions and discovered that the people who sold us our tools and clothing and food needed people to make them for them. They were willing to pay money for this labor.
So millions of us went to work making tools for others that we used to make for ourselves.
Over time we learned to accept corporate structure as the legitimate source of societal fulfillment.
Personal survival skills were devalued and replaced by the acquisition of money or extravagance or power.
What one could do was less valuable than what one could buy.
We also learned that certain words that once seemed important, words such as civics, family, community, self-reliance, thrift, ethics, etc. had been overtaken by other words: consumer, jobs, economy, jobs, bargain, jobs, career, jobs, education, jobs, diploma, jobs, power, jobs, credit, jobs, etc.
I wrote the thoughts above after reading the following piece by the American writer Guy Davenport:

"Take back your body from its possession by the automobile; take back your imagination from the TV set; take back your wealth from Congress's bottomless pit and maniac spending; take back your skills as home makers from the manufacturers; take back your minds from the arguments from necessity and the merchants of fear and prejudice. Take back peace from perpetual war. Take back your lives; they are yours."
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Born 76 years ago today

2011-04-29T12:50:00.004-04:00

This photograph of my brother Alan was taken two or three years ago. He is beginning one of his favorite hikes: a walk through Goose Pond State Park between Chester and Monroe, New York.
Once upon a time this road was called Lazy Hill Road. It ran a few miles from Route 17 (now 17M) to Laroe Road. It was populated only by dairy farms. I have forgotten some of the names now but all the farms were located on the right side of the road with their backs to Goose Pond mountian and the creek that ran through the fields along the mountain's base.
At the top of the rise shown in the photo was the Tom Roe farm. A mile farther was the Joe Piekara farm and then a farm called Sunnyvale which was the home of our maternal grandmother and step-grandfather, Maude and Thaddeus Mapes. Alan and I spent a lot of our boyhood there.
Alan died last June so this is the first of his birthdays that I will observe without him. I wrote about his death here last year.

On Freedom

2011-04-28T08:07:00.001-04:00

There are two generations in the United States today who have never known true freedom. The best example of proof for this statement is the ambivalent response to the release of documents by Wikileaks. Some people welcome it as exactly right. Some consider it a traitorous act. Most are made uneasy by it with shifting feelings of "it's good" or "maybe not so good."
I don't understand why people are willing to say that they don't need to know everything our government does or plans to do. Is it the label of SECRET that frightens them? Or is it the burden of knowing?
In 1955, there was a re-issue of a book titled Generation of Vipers by Philip Wylie. When this book first appeared in December 1942 it was controversial. Partly this was due to Mr Wylie speaking his mind in the midst of a world war. It was also due to his original and iconclastic thought and plain expression thereof.
Mr Wylie wrote a number of footnotes for the re-issue of 1955. The following is one of those footnotes. It appears in the last chapter of the book.

"We can have one categorical premise only: the democratic premise - leaving no room for any other - demanding the right to all information as the route to all understanding and judgment, and transcending in private, national and international existence all special pleading..
It is the steady loss of this right which, since 1945, has caused me to assert in every possible medium that liberty is perishing in U.S.A. Common man did not see, after Hiroshima, that to make any part of abstract science a secret was to deny to all mankind access to basic truth. Uncommon man, a very few physicists excepted, did not see that formidable point, either. And neither group perceived that a little start at making mere knowledge secret would inevitably spread, so that much knowledge would soon be hidden, much policy would in consequence be shaped in secret, and the people would no longer be "properly informed" wherefore able to make "appropriate decdisions" - indeed, any decisions.
In 1945, and every since, I have published the view that a failure of the Soviets to enter into an open, free, inspected world community of scientific knowledge, including what is called "military secrets" must be regarded by the American people as an intolerable affront to American freedom and therefore an obligatory cause for ultimatum. I have continuingly pointed out that the only alternative - a secret America - a land where even the elected representatives no longer can be "cleared" to learn all the facts, truths and data relevant to good government - leads to what in effect amounts to dictatorship, since it is not free and open government.
I have said that such a condition - recognized or not - would breed increasing fear in a people thitherto accustomed to knowing (by their constitutional rights) all the facts. I have said that their automatic terror -conscious or not- would lead the people of this country into a state of hysteria - a state of inappropriate response, a state in which some would become apathetic to every peril, othes would seek to vent their unidentified terror by punishing "whipping boys," and still others would try to escape by attitudes of "eat, drink and be merry," or by plunging into religious paroxysms- "trusting" God to accomplish duties they would not themselves even face, or embracing fugue and fantasy-imagining that "it can't happen here" or that little men from outer space would save us from the bombs.
As early as 1946, I named the years to come - these years- "The Terror" (always providing we kept failing to see that a secret Russia, by compelling secrecy on U.S.A., abrogated our basic freedom to know). The hysterias I predicted are manifest in our national life today. So far, we have failed to see that awful meaning of our lost liberty; we have failed to take the formidable, self-evident steps against Russia; we have failed even to realize that we are now a kind of permissive "dictatorship" wherein the man in the street no longer controls his government because he no longer knows what "secrets" effect its policies, its plans, its expenditures, and so on.
It is not surprising, then, that we exhibit the classical forms of hysteria on a wide scale -or that we do not appreciate these symptoms for what they are: such self-blindness is one symptom of the familiar disease.
There is no such thing as a free and uninformed people; there is not even such a thing as a free press in a land of government by restriction and classification. Without all knowledge, liberty expires; so all of us who think we are still free are bitterly deluded."

American Capitalism is failing

2011-04-26T10:10:00.002-04:00

-A report has surfaced that Katie Couric is leaving the post of anchor of the CBS Evening News. An item included in that news report states that her salary is fifteen million dollars per year ($15,000,000 each year).
That's the equivalent of $300,000 a year for 50 years. She has a five year contract so her 5 year gross earnings have been $75,000,000. That's $1,500,000 per year for 50 years.
Ms Couric's job is not worth that size salary. Her talents and background and education do not support payment of that size salary. So what was CBS paying for? If one asks, one will hear words like 'household name', 'celebrity', 'large fan base', 'cachet', 'star', etc.
Who someone is can be important but it should not be more important than what they can do.
I cite Ms Couric only as an example of a trend that has been evident for years, especially in sports and entertainment. Less well-known but equally offensive are the inflated salaries and benefits for top corporate officers.
This is a serious symptom. The wheels and gears and chains that move and drive the American capitalistic engine are badly out of balance or sync. There is a disproportinate relationship between product and value. This is an infection that weakens and devalues the structure of our economic system.
The American ecologist Eugene Odum put it very well when he wrote "Growth beyond the optimum becomes cancer."
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Stale Afternoon

2011-04-19T15:47:00.000-04:00

My cat - pilot of a Pharaoh's dreams,
assumes the force of Statue-
primacy of predictive Power
- the smoky gaze.

Out a window
awkwardly
a stunted day recedes.
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Kakistocracy is ...

2011-04-19T07:33:00.001-04:00

...the form of government we have had for some years. Perhaps as long ago as 1964. It gets worse with each passing year.
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A FALLING OUT -- a short story

2011-04-16T07:45:00.001-04:00

     All Spring and Summer there was talk about a ski area being built on Mount Forge. This news seemed strange to me because I didn't know anyone who skied. We didn't get a lot of snow in New Jersey. Some winters we got hardly any snow at all. But the word was they would make their own snow, if you could believe that!
     The news of this miracle came from Billy Romp, a high school classmate of mine. Billy had gone to work at the ski area right after graduation. He had always worked at some odd jobs, even when he was in school. Anyway, Billy said he had spent most of the summer raking stones off newly graded slopes and then seeding the slopes and spreading salt hay on the seed so the rains wouldn't wash the seed away. Now they were laying two lines of pipe up the side of each slope. These pipes would carry compressed air and water to be mixed in a 'snow gun' and discharged under pressure to release a mist in the air that would freeze and fall to earth as snow. He said there was lots of work, all kinds of laboring and construction, and they were hard up for help. Chair lifts were going up, and rope tows, and it was all quite exciting.
     I had fooled around all summer, taking vacation, but near Fall I was feeling edgy. I knew I needed to be doing something, getting on with my life as my father would tell me every day. I should make something of myself, get a trade. My father was a carpenter and he said he could make me one too but I said no. I know that bothered him but I didn't want to be a carpenter.
     My friends and I talked about enlisting in the military or was it better to wait for the draft. Vietnam was heating up then. LBJ, the cowboy President with the sniggery smile, was throwing the good old USA deeper into the mud with every speech. My father said that joining up would be good for me, make me grow up. He had been in World War II and believed every man should do the patriotic thing. I thought so myself, but I wasn't ready just yet. I think that bothered him too.
So I went to Mount Forge and applied for work. They hired me on the spot and they made it clear that I could stay on when the construction was done and work when the area was open. Thee would be jobs manning the lifts and tows, making snow, grooming the slopes, maintenance of equipment, work in the ski rental shop, and other stuff like that. The ski area would be open seven days and three evening a week.
Well it worked out fine for me. I was willing to work all the hours they gave me and that made the owner happy because the jobs were seasonal and turnover was high. Sometimes people just stopped coming to work and there would be no one to stand at a lift station or sell tickets and I would get called and say yessir and go racing in to save the day.
     Spring came and the weather turned mild. The snow began to disappear from the slopes. Skiing was open only on weekends to make the snow last longer but finally there just wasn't enough snow left so the place was shut down and layoffs began. The owner asked me if I wanted to stay on to keep the place up, doing maintenance. I had done a good job, he said. I would get a nice raise and a title. Mountain Manager, it was called. I said yes, sure enough. I loved that title. Billy Romp and two other guys were kept on too.
     My father said I had taken hold really well but did this job have a future? I told him that it had next year in it anyway. Past that I didn't know.
     The next winter my father found out that his own job had future problems. The USA was in a recession; construction was off, and my father was out of work. Temporarily. Until next Spring. After a week or so he asked me if he could get work at the ski area. At first I thought he meant carpentry and I said no, but he said he meant any kind of work, something to do to make money. Well, I asked the owner and he said sure, tell him to come on in. He's got to be good. Life father, like son, right?
     Dad was put to work as lift operator at the top of the longest chairlift on the mountain. The platform where he worked was made of wood and stood about 25 feet above a jagged rocky slope. On the slope side of the platform there was a booth where the operator stood to watch the approach of skiers and make sure they were ready to ski off out of the chair. Inside the booth was an intercom phone for communication with the base terminal and a mushroom button shutoff switch.
     My father did really well. He was older than most of the guys who worked there but he knew how to fit in. Things got better between us. He didn't even seem to mind that I was in charge of him, or that I was paid more than he was.
     One day when things were slow I made an inspection of the chairlift towers. I had done this before. I'd start with the bottom tower and walk my way up the mountain on the right-of-way under the cable.  I climbed each tower and checked out the sheaves for bearing noise or wobble and how the cable was wearing on the sheave lining. As I was climbing down from the last tower near the upper platform I saw Billy Romp riding up to relieve my father for lunch. He smiled and waved. I yelled at him to tell my father to wait for me, we'd ride down together. He nodded OK.
     I finished climbing down and walked the last 100 feet to the platform. Dad was scrunched tight to the outside of the booth talking to Billy inside. He saw me and waved come on.
Now the rules for safe operation of the chairlift were that the lift must be stopped for anyone getting a chair for a ride down to the base. So when I got to the platform I stood to one side and watched an empty chair swing around the terminal and start toward me and I waited for the lift to stop. Dad went by me and stood in the path of the chair and shouted "I told Billy not to shut it off. Let's hop on." I started to say no but I looked at Billy and he was laughing and I knew it wouldn't stop and that I had to get in front and do this horseplay thing with my Dad.
     I think he tried to bump me a little but I'm not sure. I know he went for his part of the seat like a kid, fast, grinning. Like I say, I think he tried to bump me over a little, maybe not. I know I bumped him back but, just as the moving chair approached the platform edge, I saw I had bumped too far or too hard because I could see he wasn't on the seat and the chair left the platform and my father slid down and off onto the rocks below.
     For a moment I froze, then I looked back. My father wasn't moving. Billy was on the intercom calling. I turned around. Skiers going up on the other side of the towers pointed, gaping. What happened? one of them shouted at me. I saw a snowmobile with two ski patrolmen on it climb the slope, their jackets the color of dried blood. They looked like statues on a frozen sea.
     I heard later that Dad, big man that he was, had hit the rocks hard, face down, breaking ribs, crushing his heart.
     People asked me What happened?   I don't know, I said. I'm not sure. Happened so fast.
I couldn't say what I thought, what I felt.
     Anyway, afterwards, I got on with my life, like he always wanted. I was happy too. but I wasn't the same. No, I was different in a way that I didn't understand.
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Capitalism isn't working

2011-04-14T11:39:00.001-04:00

The online firm Scottrade polled 226 registered investment advisors for their opinion on the amount of retirement money people will need to live at the level of comfort they are used to enjoying.
71% of them stated that one million dollars will not be enough. People between the ages of 25 to 42 will require 2 to 3 million dollars for a comfortable retirement. You young'uns better get hoppin'.

Shortly after Katrina destroyed much of the Gulf Coast economy, the Governor of Mississippi was quoted as saying the first thing to do was get the casinos in Biloxi operating because "Casinos are the life blood of the state of Mississippi". Wow, I wonder what Adam Smith would say about that!

Writing about a particular firm in the New York Times on April21, 2007, Brad Stone stated "revenues will inevitably flatten as the company matures. If it wants to keep treating investors to torrid growth, the company needs to develop other ways to make money." Again, what would Adam Smith say about that?

The Adult Entertainment Industry says there is room for pornography in the economy because "a market for porn exists". The impramatur of the market is greater than the infalliblity of the Pope.

More news on gambling. (Proponents call it 'gaming'. Isn't that cute?) The state of Florida is considering changing Florida into a state with full casino gambling. There are casinos in Florida now, mostly run by the Seminole Indians. It is proposed to start with twenty-six counties and proponents claim the state could get S2.5 billion in first four years from license auctions and taxes.
Of course, this is being considered because the government is running a deficit and can't meet its obligations. Legislators refuse to tax people because people who earn their money should keep it. Except of course, they should remember to spend their money on slot machines and card games. Then the state can tax the profits of the casino. That's okay.
Not enough to fund education and schools with lotteries. We must fund police, firemen, libraries, highway construction, etc. with gambling profits.
These are ideas from the 'family values people'. What hypocrisy. What cowardice.
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The way my time passes

2011-04-11T20:44:00.000-04:00

Each day I ride a great white stallion through the streets of my town but no one sees it happen.
I stalk the halls of government, leaving instructions, notes on policy, economic proposals. No one reads them.
I court the most beautiful shopgirls in town but they remain unaware.

One of my standard night dreams is a failure to please someone. My actions, or the way I live, are an affront to another person who lives (or hovers?) nearby. I am troubled by this but take no action to remedy it.
The person whom I fail to please is always a stranger, someone I have never seen or met before.

Whoever I am to myself, I am a different person to someone else.
I am a different person to myself now than I was when I was twenty.
How many of me have there been?
Consider how people change as they mature. The physical aspect becomes so different with age as to make one unrecognizable to acquaintances of 50 years ago. Are there not interior changes, cognitive and emotional, that are as drastic as the exterior changes to the physical self? Aren't there unseen scars, old healed-over wounds. Isn't there a graying of the soul?

How does one remain happy when one knows there are reasons not to be so?
Are there no negative epiphanies?
Call it Jason's paradox: a known secret, lost in found.
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Howard Nemerov - The Vacuum (1955) (wife or dog)

2011-04-05T15:24:00.000-04:00

THE VACUUM

The house is so quiet now
The vacuum cleaner sulks in the corner closet
Its bag limp as a stopped lung, its mouth
Grinning into the floor, maybe at my
Slovenly life, my dog-dead youth.

I've lived this way long enough,
But when my old woman died her soul
Went into that vacuum cleaner, and I can't bear
To see the bag swell like a belly, eating the dust
And the woolen mice, and begin to howl

Because there is old filth everywhere
She used to crawl, in the corner and under the stair.
I know now how life is cheap as dirt,
And still the hungry, angry heart
Hangs on and howls, biting at air.

I have had multiple reactions to this poem for the time that I have been reading it. Who is speaking? Who is being spoken of? What is being spoken of? What words have multiple uses?
I know there is a vacuum in a closet; there is a vacuum left by a death.
Perhaps a dog has died, and recently too, his 'dog-dead youth' being the first months of bereavement. 'The house is so quiet now...' Not only because the vacuum is stored away but the dog no longer howls or bites the air. Who has not seen a dog snap and bark at a vacuum in use? The vacuum with its grinning mouth howls back.
The narrator says that his old woman has died but it couldn't have been a human who crawled 'in the corner, and under the stair.' A dog would do that. This sounds more like a man who lived alone with a dog which served as a substitute human companion.
'life is cheap as dirt' - a common thought for someone bereaved and unaccepting, but 'the hungry angry heart hangs on' howling.
There is a richness to this poem that I can chew on for a long time.
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American capitalism fails again

2011-04-05T07:21:00.000-04:00

A favorite trick is the reduction of size in a product while the price remains the same or, in some cases, even rises. For example, a half gallon (64 ounces) carton of orange is now 59 ounces. They don't hide the number. The change is overt but deceitful.
A half gallon of milk (8 cups) no longer says 64 ounces. Instead, the label reads:
Serving Size: one cup.
Servings per container: about 8 (emphasis mine)
Covert and deceitful.
I wonder. Have they thought this through? How much lower can they take the size before it becomes an embarrassment?

Joe Bageant (1946-2011)

2011-04-04T20:39:00.000-04:00

About three years ago I discovered Joe Bageant on the internet. I don't remember the circumstances but I am grateful for the chance to have read his work.
Joe Bageant's writing was a joy to read. He was funny. His friend, Fred Reed, tells of Joe describing a girl with pierced nose, lips, eyelids, and more, looking like she had fallen face-first into an open tackle box.
Joe could put together a critical appraisal of rural America that swept the stage of most other players
But I was most impressed by his fight for the underclass of America. What underclass? Why, all of it, but especially the poor whites of Scots-Irish descent who live in rural Appalachia. Joe did not romanticize them. He acknowledged their racism, their parochialism, their culture which was so much less stellar than that found in Boston, LA, or New York City. But he recognized their pride, and their worth as humans. And he railed against the system that ignored them, pretending they weren't there.
But let him say it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYaqEgyrh1M&feature=player_embedded

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From Another World, Long Long Ago, Far Far Away

2011-03-31T08:02:00.000-04:00

A Bitter Philosophy

2011-03-27T18:01:00.010-04:00

Lon Chaney's last words in this clip have a terrible truth that transcends cynicism or nihilism. Yet, they do not represent an answer. And, the lesson is always learned too late.
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Passage

2011-03-26T16:37:00.000-04:00

Seek an end to wisdom,
knowing what to do;
being right though heart rebel,
one's self turns one's own screw.
Maturity desirable,
a truly worthy goal
but cleaved we lie
while Age goes by
in search of our lost soul.
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Quotation from Wendell Berry

2011-03-26T07:46:00.000-04:00

"And it is one of the miracles of science and hygiene that the germs that used to be in our food have been replaced by poisons."

Wendell Berry, "The Unsettling of America"
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American Capitalism isn't working

2011-03-24T08:11:00.000-04:00

Lower wages and lower labor costs are desirable goals.
Lower prices are not a desirable goal. That's labeled 'deflation.'
Most people are required to borrow to buy what they need.
A policy of pay-as-you-go is not possible for most people, including the various governmental entities.
The so-called Law of Supply and Demand isn't working, viz., the oil market.
An economy that grows vigorously is preferred to an economy that grows slowly while remaining stable.
A 'higher' Standard of Living is preferred to a sensible Standard of Living.
It is wrong to 'make work' but it is good to take work away.
When labor costs are reduced, prices continue to rise.
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Elizabeth Taylor, RIP

2011-03-23T17:45:00.001-04:00

A fine tribute by one fine actor to another:

Quotation

2011-03-23T16:57:00.000-04:00

They sneer at me for leaning all awry;
What! did the Hand then of the Potter shake?

-Omar Khayyam, Rubaiyat
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Wisdom from George F Kennan

2011-03-23T09:43:00.000-04:00

"This brings us to the questions of "human rights." Let us first glance at the extent of our involvement in this cause. The Department of State , as I understand it, in addition to harboring the Bureau of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs headed by an assistant secretary of state, now has a "human rights officer" attached to the normally already redundant staff of every American diplomatic mission anywhere. One part of the duties of these particular officials is said to be the preparation of an annual report on the human rights record, so called, of the host country. The department, for its part, maintains in Washington a "human rights reports team", to read and ponder such reports and to prepare a consolidated report for congress. It does all this, to be sure, not solely of its own volition; these procedures are now, at least in part, required by law. But what is under consideration here is not the involvement of the Department of State alone but of our government as a whole in the question at issue. And thus extravagantly do we, like a stern schoolmaster clothed in the mantle of perfect virtue, sit in judgments over all other governments, looking sharply down the nose of each of them to see whether its handling of its domestic affairs meets with our approval.

That these commitments constitute one more limitation on our freedom of action in foreign affairs - one more instance in which we have committed ourselves in advance to behave in a given way in a wide category of instances, none of which can be specifically foreseen - is beyond doubt. And is this justified?
Let us recall that the manner in which regimes customarily treat their subjects, worldwide, is largely a matter of tradition, habit, and popular concepts of what is right and what is wrong. All these are subject to change, to be sure, over long periods of time, but seldom, if the results are to be lasting, can the change be abrupt.

It is the habit of a great many regimes, across the surface of the globe, to deal harshly with those of their nationals who have opposed their positions of power, or who are suspected of doing so. In most instances, their opponents, if the shoe were on the other foot, would behave in much the same way. The incentives to such behavior are never-ending, and unless the national traditions and political habits sternly rule them out, they will normally be yielded to. The pressures of outside opinion may occasionally cause the respective regime to go a bit easier for a time in this respect; but unless these pressures are supported by the inherited political culture of the place, and particularly by the existence and tradition of democratic self-government, such gestures of moderation are not apt to be lasting.
The pressure of outside opinion about human rights sustained oer long periods of time, can indeed produce beneficial changes in both attitudes and institutions. The role of private opinion in this direction, when applied in support of gradual change, is important and should be welcomed. Whether governments, and the U.S. government in particular, should be involved in exerting such pressures is more dubious. In this respect, governments have to take the world pretty much as they find it. Their task - at least, the task of the U. S. government, as I perceive it - is to conduct its own relations with other governments in a manner conducive to a minimum of bilateral friction and to the maximum of usefulness to world peace and stability. This will be most effective if the sound old principle on noninterference in the other's domestic affairs is respected - if the lines of responsibility, in other words, are clearly recognized. This includes the responsibility of each regime for the governing of its own people. Each of them has, alone, the power to shape the situation in this respect. It must be, from the standpoint of morality, the judge of its own behavior. Outside pressure, particularly from another government, is seldom helpful, and may be counterproductive.

For a foreign government to exert such pressure, in circumstances impossible to foresee, for an indefinite time into the future, strikes me as in all respects a questionable procedure; and I cannot but regret the lengths to which we have shown ourselves prepared to go, and the leadership we have even taken internationally in promoting, on the governmental level, the cause of "human rights."

The die is now cast. Formal obligations have been entered into. The practice has found sanction in American public opinion. So be it. But I would ask it to be noted that this is one more instance where indulgence of the desire to appear virtuous in our own eyes has placed limitations on the area in which we should have the flexibility to act usefully in more significant areas of international life."

George F. Kennan (Around the Cragged Hill, 1993, W W Norton & Co.)
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Impeach Obama

2011-03-21T20:38:00.001-04:00

Successive unconstitutional precedents on war powers have brought us to this: a President will initiate military action on a foreign power without cause or congressional approval.
The decision was taken by the President when he was out of the country. The President did not consult with Congress. Obama did not even notify Congress.
At a press conference today, President Obama said the action was necessary because a UN resolution "was a mandate" for conducting acts of war on the nation of Libya.
This man is a constitutional lawyer?!!!?
Now, a President with the approval of a vote in the UN Security Council has the authority to use American military resources to conduct foreign wars. If that is his position, impeachment proceedings should begin at once.
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Dilbert's Aphorism

2011-03-13T10:58:00.000-04:00

"Teamwork means you can't pick the side that's right."
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Wallace Stevens speaks to us

2011-03-13T10:49:00.001-04:00

Idiom of the Hero

I heard two workers say, 'This chaos
Will soon be ended.'

This chaos will not be ended,
The red and the blue house blended,

Not ended, never and never ended,
The weak man mended,

The man that is poor at night
Attended

Like the man that is rich and right.
The great men will not be blended...

I am the poorest of all.
I know that I cannot be mended,

Out of the clouds, pomp of the air,
By which at least I am befriended.
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Wanna see a movie?

2011-03-11T17:45:00.002-05:00

I saw The Third Man in the Colonial Theater in Monroe, NY in 1949 and it has remained one of my favorites. The casting was superb and Carol Reed's direction was equally so.
There are many fine scenes in this film but the one I always think of first is the finish. Holly Martins, a hack novel writer, is loyal to his feelings for Anna Schmidt, the bereaved girlfriend of Harry Lime. Anna is loyal to her prime principle, her love and loyalty for Harry. Holly hopes she will stop and let him explain why he had to betray her criminal lover to the law.
A major reason why I like this piece is the willingness of the director to not rush the ending. Anna's long walk is perfectly done, perfectly timed.

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Mind your DOR's

2011-03-07T16:08:00.000-05:00

That's what Grandmother used to say. "Mind your DOR's"
What are they, Grandma?
They are your Duties, Obligations, and Responsibilities."
What about our rights?
"You are born with those. Your DOR's are given to you. If you pay attention to them, your rights will always be there. ______________________________________________________________________________________

What's that again?

2011-03-03T15:54:00.002-05:00

Last evening I listened to correspondent Ben Wedeman on CNN describe why the Libyan people were fighting so valiantly to overthrow their government.
Can't quote verbatim but he pretty much said the following:

"They're angry. This is a wealthy country, rich in oil revenues but the people are not sharing in that wealth. They are angry seeing their young men sent to fight wars in Africa that they have no interest in. They're angry about having no real voice in how their country is run. They can't afford an education. They're sick of the corruption."

Listening to this, I turned to my wife and half-joking I said "He could be describing the United States."
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Secretary Robert Gates on War

2011-03-02T14:05:00.000-05:00

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made an unusual statement while speaking to an assembly of West Point cadets on Friday, February 25th. Secretary Gates is reported to have said the following:

"In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the President to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should 'have his head examined,' as General MacArthur so delicately put it."

This statement is a disturbing example of the poor leadership pervading our government. At first glance, it seems daring. After all, a prominent Defense Secretary has indirectly (i.e., without naming him) criticized the actions of his predecessor. But no boldness is required to say this in a protected environment, and not a public place where it may get recorded on video and where he may receive questions about his statement.
Also, the remarks come seven years too late. He offers no remedy for the mistakes which he supervises and struggles to control as he nears the end of his career.
As a military historian, Mr. Gates is not doing a very good job either. His interpretation of MacArthur's remark is flawed. When MacArthur made the 'head examined' comment he said that a President should avoid "a land war in Asia." At the time, it was clear that the reference was to China.
Secretary Gates changed 'land war' to 'land army' and widened the geography to include the Middle East and Africa. Of course, most of the propaganda machine, sometimes referred to as the American press, reworked Gates' comment and put the phrase 'land war' in many versions of his quoted statement.
Another reason why Gates' statement is no great shakes is the knowledge (finally!) among even the hardest of hard heads that the land wars of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan were dismal failures and losses.
I know there are still some neocons who believe we should police every nation in the world but they seem isolated at last. But the trend outlined by the Secretary is to "reshape" the Army (meaning downsize) and depend more on naval and air forces to support our policies.
So the prospect of fewer wars isn't in the forecast. The plan is to make war just as often as necessary but to have less loss of life and revenue in the undertaking of it. How much less, of course, is up for speculation.
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Oil spill? What oil spill? Didn't we fix that?

2011-02-28T14:28:00.001-05:00

This nation's incompetency grows deeper with each day that passes. Not only the government, but the institutions of education, religion, military, and finance seem unable to right themselves and restore direction and purpose to their tasks.
Click link below for one example:

http://www.sott.net/articles/show/224073

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Music of Birds

2011-02-23T12:17:00.000-05:00

I am grateful for bird song. For many reasons.

1. It doesn't change. The Baltimore oriole, the wren, the white-throated sparrow, their warbling of 70 years ago is the same beautiful song today. And I never tire of it.
2.  Bird song has no genres, no categories or sub-categories.
3.  No video. Always live in concert.
4.  No batteries are required.
5. It's free.
6.  No singing at night.
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I Like This! Like, you know, I really do! Know what I'm sayin?

2011-02-23T10:55:00.001-05:00

Here a Nazi, there a Nazi: the other N-word

2011-01-26T17:27:00.002-05:00

January 24, 2011 - Anand Giridharadas - The Daily Show With Jon Stewart - Full Episode Video Comedy Central

A Meditation, by John Donne

2011-01-18T15:17:00.002-05:00

Variable, and therefore miserable condition of Man; this minute I was well, and am ill, this minute. I am surprised with a sudden change, and alteration to worse, and can impute it to no cause, nor call it by any name. We study Health, and we deliberate upon our meats, and drink, and air, and exercises, and we hew, and we polish every stone, that goes to that building, and so our Health is a long and regular work; But in a minute a Cannon batters all, overthrows all, demolishes all; a Sickness unprevented for all our diligence, unsuspected for all our curiosity; nay, undeserved, if we consider only disorder, summons us, seizes us, possesses us, destroys us in an instant. O miserable condition of Man, which was not imprinted by God, who as he is immortal himself, had put a coal, a beam of Immortality into us, which we might have blown into a flame, but blew it out, by our first sin; we beggared ourselves by hearkening after false riches, and infatuated our selves by hearkening after false knowledge. So that now, we do not only die, but die upon the Rack, die by the torment of sickness; nor that only, but are preafflicted, superafflicted with the jealousies and suspicions, and apprehensions of Sickness, before we can call it a sickness; we are not sure we are ill; one hand asks the other by the pulse, and our eyes ask our urine, how we do. O multiplied misery! we die, and cannot enjoy death, because we die in this torment of sickness; we are tormented with sickness, and cannot stay till the torment come, but preapprehensions and presages, prophecy those torments, which induce that death before either come; and our dissolution is conceived in these first changes, quickened in the sickness itself, and born in death, which bears date from these first changes. Is this the honour which Man hath by being a little world, That he hath these earthquakes in himself, sudden shakings; these lightnings, sudden flashes; these thunders, sudden noises; these Eclipses, sudden offuscations, and darknings of his senses; these Blazing stars, sudden fiery exhalations; these Rivers of blood, sudden red waters? Is he a world to himself only therefore, that he hath enough in himself, not only to destroy, and execute himself, but to presage that execution upon himself; to assist the sickness, to antedate the sickness, to make the sickness the more irremediable, by sad apprehensions, and as if he would make a fire the more vehement, by sprinkling water upon the coals, so to wrap a hot fever in cold Melancholy, lest the fever alone should not destroy fast enough, without this contribution, nor perfect the work (which is destruction) except we joined an artificial sickness, of our own melancholy, to our natural, our unnatural fever. O perplexed discomposition, O riddling distemper, O miserble condition of Man!

The Great American Songbook

2010-12-29T20:27:00.000-05:00

Dick Robinson, originator of American Standards By The Sea, has announced the founding of The Society for the Preservation of the Great American Songbook (GAS).
The official worldwide launch of this Internet radio station will take place at midnight January 1, 2011. A beta version is available now at the website http://www.theoriginalgasstation.com/

The mission of the Society is to preserve and perpetuate the music, character and history of the Great American Songbook featuring artists like George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer, Frank Sinatra, Vic Damone, Jack Jones, Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughan, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Hoagy Carmichael.
In three days listeners will enjoy non-stop hit songs around-the-clock and around-the-world ontheoriginalgasstation.com.
From the few hours I have spent listening on line, I can report that famous singers do not sing all of the songs; some are performed by lesser known talents (to me, at least) who deserve a wider audience.
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A Genuine Two-fer

2010-12-27T11:00:00.000-05:00

Yes, I know that originator of video has mis-spelled Mr. Welles last name.

Merry Christmas, Bedford Falls!

2010-12-25T14:22:00.000-05:00

Just a minute — just a minute. Now, hold on, Mr. Potter. You’re right when you say my father was no business man. I know that. Why he ever started this cheap, penny-ante Building and Loan, I’ll never know. But neither you nor anybody else can say anything against his character, because his whole life was…Why, in the twenty-five years since he and Uncle Billy started this thing, he never once thought of himself. Isn’t that right, Uncle Billy? He didn’t save enough money to send Harryto school, let alone me. But he did help a few people get out of your slums, Mr. Potter. And what’s wrong with that? Why…Here, you’re all businessmen here. Doesn’t it make them better citizens? Doesn’t it make them better customers? You…you said…What’d you say just a minute ago?…They had to wait and save their money before they even ought to think of a decent home. Wait! Wait for what? Until their children grow up and leave them? Until they’re so old and broken-down that they…Do you know how long it takes a working man to save five thousand dollars? Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you’re talking about…they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn’t think so. People were human beings to him, but to you, a warped frustrated old man, they’re cattle. Well, in my book he died a much richer man than you’ll ever be!

Timeless, isn't it? As relevant then as now.

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Shame on us

2010-12-18T09:08:00.001-05:00

If you would do it to the least of these....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20101217/ts_yblog_thelookout/undercover-investigation-of-smithfield-foods-reveals-factory-farm-horrors
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7000 Chemicals

2010-12-13T22:25:00.000-05:00

Several days ago, the Surgeon General's office issued a report which stated that one cigarette can damage a person's DNA. The report went on to say that one whiff of secondhand smoke can be enough to trigger a heart attack.
The primary cause for these results is due to 7000 chemicals and compounds to be found in each cigarette. 70 of these chemicals and compounds are known to cause cancer while the remainder are toxic.
The two preceding paragraphs have me perplexed. Where to begin?
Shouldn't there be some perspective on the probability of suffering damage to one's DNA from smoking one cigarette? Ditto for the chances of the one whiff scare? Is this a failure to be more explicit the fault of the Surgeon General's office or is it the failure of journalism to fully report on the findings?
7000 chemicals and compounds in one cigarette? Who knew? Wouldn't this make a carton of cigarettes a candidate for an EPA superfund cleanup? Do you know of any other object or place that has that many toxic chemicals and compounds in it?
Another question. How many of those chemicals and compounds were put in the tobacco by God and how many by man?
If the cancer causing agents are put in tobacco by the manufacturer of cigarettes, is this legal? If it is legal, should it be?
Is this what is meant by "Better living through chemistry"?
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Sample of revelations from Wikileaks documents.

2010-12-11T21:22:00.000-05:00

Here is a summary of some leaked documents from the New York Times after they were redacted by same. I was most interested in the statements on private contractors, a new element in American strategy that I complained about earlier.
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On Class Distinctions

2010-12-09T20:30:00.000-05:00

I have noticed that people who reject class differences in the political sphere are able to find them everywhere else, especially in the worlds of 'taste' and 'culture'.
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Thoughts On Wikileaks and Assange

2010-12-09T17:38:00.002-05:00

My first reaction to the 'dumping' of secrets was negative. I value my position as a tenth generation American with strong ties to and love for this nation. (It is important to note that I said 'nation', not government.)
My eighth birthday was three weeks after Pearl Harbor so I lived impressionable years absorbing the struggles of World War II. Slogans like 'Loose lips sink ships' were serious lessons learned.
I have a conservative personality. As a teenager, one of my fictional heros was the title character of an historical novel by Kenneth Roberts: Captain Caution. Now that's not every American boy's cup of joe, is it?
No, I don't take such transgressions (dumping secrets) lightly. However, recently I have been retracing the political history of American conservatism in the years following World War II. Such an enterprise always entails a number of interesting digressions when one reads a footnote here or encounters an obscure or little-known (for me) author there.
This reading shows a growing pattern of government secrecy, government overreach of power, and the beginnings of betrayal of what I consider the basic American value: liberty, or if you prefer, freedom.
From my point of view, the last sixteen years have left me feeling like a stranger in my own country.
We sanction countries resulting in the death of children. We try to be the policeman of the world. Over 4400 Americans have been killed in Iraq. More than were killed in the World Trade Center. Who is responsible for that?
Suddenly the government is the injured party. I don't buy it. Dump is a good word for what Wikileaks has done. The government has been given a long overdue enema.
I like Ron Paul's assessment: "In a society where truth becomes treason, we're in big trouble."
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Photographing Ernest Hemingway

2010-12-07T15:01:00.000-05:00

Stephen Vincent Benet Western Star

2010-11-25T08:18:00.000-05:00

The American writer, Stephen Vincent Benet, is not forgotten but he is not remembered nor read enough in 21st century America.
A writer of fiction, essays and poetry, he appears to be most remembered for his short story "The Devil and Daniel Webster" which has been made into a play for the theater and for the radio.
In 1928, he published "John Brown's Body", a book length narrative poem about the civil war. The book was very popular and well received by most critics.
Mr. Benet had plans to write an even longer narrative poem about the United States but an early death in 1943 (age 44) cut short his plan. He had proceed far enough to have one book on this subject published posthumously called "Western Star".
This excerpt is from that book and appropriate to the day of Thanksgiving.
"And then, no man knows why,
there came the savages, smiling, bringing corn.

Corngivers, why do you give
That these men live?
They think that you are devils of the wood
And you have fought them once and will again,
Yet, in their last extremity, you come
As if in answer to some forest drum
To bring the bounty never understood,
To bring the food that saves the starving men.

Gods? You have seen them die like truculent fools
Where anyone one of you would live and thrive
And, if they have the iron and the tools,
The powder and the shot,
These things avail them not.
Their magic cannot keep their best alive.

Pity? Why should you pity them or care?
They will be greedy, soon, when they are fed.
Look in their eyes and see
The felling of the tree,
The great vine-twisted tree of Powhatan.

Look in their eyes and see the hungry man
Moving with ax and fire upon the wood,
Spoiling the rivers, digging up the dead.
This is your own destruction that you bear
In venison and corn
and the red Autumn leaf
That falls before the snow,
This is the doom of werowance and chief.
This is the breaking of the hazel-bow.

And yet, before it happens, and the great
Passionate drum of wrong begins to sound,
Ere the dead lie upon the bloody ground
And the chief's sons lie drunken in the street,
Let us remember how this happened, too,
And how the food was given, not in hate,
Liking or dazzled wonder, but, it seems,
As if compelled by something past all plans,
Some old barbaric courtesy of man's,
Wild as his heart, red as his hunter's dreams,
-And for no cause the white men ever knew.

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Black Friday

2010-11-23T08:28:00.002-05:00

"It is a work of art, that shop window, a breeder of anarchism, a destroyer of contentment, a second feast of Tantalus."

Edna Ferber (1911)
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The American Mission

2010-11-22T14:30:00.000-05:00

Russell Kirk, in a lecture delivered for the Heritage foundation in the early 1980's addressed the question whether America had "a mission, providentially ordained."
Kirk believed it did and, without expressing his own concept of the mission, aligned himself with the ideas of Orestes Brownson (1805-1876) whom he describes as "a considerable political philosopher, a seminal essayist on religion, a literary critic of discernment, a serious journalist with fighting vigor, and one of the shrewder observers of American charaacter and institutions."
Brownson described the mission as "not so much the realization of liberty as the realization of the true idea of the state, which secures at once the authority of the public and the freedom of the individual - the sovreignty of the people without social despotism, and individual freedom without anarchy. In other words, its mission is to bring out in its life the dialectrical union of authority and liberty, of the natural rights of man and those of society. The Greek and Roman republics asserted the state to the detriment of individual freedom; modern republics either do the same, or assert individual freedom to the detriment of the state. The American republic has been instituted by Providence to realize the freedom of each with advantage to the other."

Kirk refines this by writing "The American Republic has the mission of reconciling liberty and law."
This is a centrist position, somewhat like favoring a mixed economy.   It seems reasonable.

In today's fervid political environment, some on the Right challenge the opposition with the charge of not believing in American Exceptionalisim. This term is very subjective in nature but at the present time it seems to mean that "America is the greatest country in the world now and forever." That is not a mission, divinely ordained. That is a state of being or consciousness that lives with the support of Pride, one of the Seven Sins.
Orestes Brownson used the terms humanitarian and social democrat to identify the threat to the American Mission. "The humanitarian democracy," Brownson wrote, "which scorns all geographical lines, effaces all individualities, and professes to plant itself on humanity alone, has acquired by the (Civil) war new strength, and is not without menace to our future."   He forsees attacks on differences between the sexes, and on private property (as unequally distributed).   "Nor can our humanitarian stop there. Individuals are, and as long as there are individuals will be, unequal; some are handsomer and some are uglier;some wiser or sillier, more or less gifted, stronger or weaker, taller or shorter, stouter or thinner than others, and therefore some have natural advantages which others have not. There is inequality, therefore injustice, which can be remedied only by the abolition of all individualities, and the reduction of all individuals to the race, or humanity, man in general. He (the humanitarian) can find no limit to his agitation this side of vague generality, which is no reality, but a pure nullity, for he respects no territorial or individual circumscriptions, and must regard creation itself as a blunder."

Brownson's remarks  have to be one of the earliest (1848) critical responses to the publication of Das Kapital and the advent of Marxism. Of course, Brownson could not forsee that our humanitarian urges would sweep us into foreign adventures, said efforts variously described as 'improving the lives of others', 'meeting our obligations abroad', 'making the world a better place', etc. The Nanny State is wrong but being a Nanny Nation to the world is not? This is one of the major contradictions in the domain of modern conservative politics.
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Evelyn Waugh on Obama

2010-11-19T16:27:00.004-05:00

"Kipling believed civilization to be something laboriously achieved which was only precariously defended. He wanted to see the defenses fully manned and he hated the liberals because he thought them gullible and feeble, believing in the easy perfectibility of man and ready to abandon the work of centuries for sentimental qualms."

I found this quote by Evelyn Waugh on a wonderful website maintained by one Roger Boylan .
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Conservatism: what is it?

2010-11-16T14:07:00.000-05:00

"Conservatism, though a necessary element in any stable society, is not a social program; in its paternalistic, nationalistic, and power-adoring tendencies it is often closer to socialism than true liberalism. And with its traditionalistic, anti-intellectual, and often mystical propensities, it will never, except in short periods of disillusionment, appeal to the young and all those others who believe that some changes are desirable if this world is to become a better place. A conservative movement, by its very nature, is bound to be a defender of establishment privilege and to lean on the power of government for the protection of privilege."

The quotation above was written by F. A. Hayek for his introduction to the 1955 re-issue of his famous book The Road To Serfdom.
I have set out to investigate the history of modern conservatism in the United States. This effort is strictly personal and for my own understanding of the forces at work today in our polity.
I began by trying to find a workable or satisfactory definition of a conservative and have concluded that there isn't one. Political conservatism in America contains divisions of great importance to their adherents. There maybe three or four definitions of conservatism.
I don't believe that Hayek's is a true definition. I see it as reflecting a problem within the domain of conservatism that has not been understood or reconciled with the philosophy.
There are other contradictions that exist within the conservative movement. The result is unwillingness to call myself a conservative when a well-known public conservative preaches ideas with which I disagree mightily.
I am using two books for a general history of the conservative movement: "The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945" by George N. Nash and "From Dawn To Decadence" by Jacques Barzun.
I chose these two books because their authors are conservative and they are excellent sources for additional reading.
My first choices for additional reading are: "The Wise Men Know What Wicked Things Are Written On The Sky" by Russell Kirk, and "The Law" by Frederic Bastiat.
Challenging works. I'll see what comes of it.
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Lest We Forget

2010-11-11T07:27:00.000-05:00

"Let no man ever, from henceforth say one word in any way countenancing war. It is dangerous even to speak of how here and there the individual may gain some hardship of soul by it. For war is hell, and those who institute it are criminals. Were there even anything to say for it, it should not be said; for its spiritual disasters far outweigh any of its advantages."

Siegfried Sassoon
English poet and war hero
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Speaking of excessive government intrusion....

2010-11-09T20:29:00.027-05:00

Newspapers in Florida often carry stories about people who have been charged with "resisting arrest without violence". On a few occasions this has been the only charge.
I have learned that The State of Florida has a statute known as 843.02 named "resisting officer without violence." It is more commonly known as "resisting arrest without violence." It is a first degree misdemeanor, and carries a maximum sentence of one year in the county jail.
Apparently the right to free speech and free assembly are not as inalienable as I thought. Exercise of those rights may be interpreted by a police officer as resisting arrest without violence.
Cops don't like citizens explaining law to them, or refusing to cooperate with them. When a cop asks a question of a citizen, he expects an answer, not a legal debate. When a cop tells you to do something, he expects you to do it. Failure to obey the policeman's orders can result in a bad arrest such as 'resisting arrest without violence.'
One gets the impression that the police don't like to leave a scene without punishing someone.
My research shows that Florida is the only state with such a statute on its books. Thank God for that!
This example is confirmation of my long-held belief that the South doesn't care very much for the Constitution of the United States.
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After this, what?

2010-11-02T17:17:00.000-04:00

I will not die to be born again.
That is not my plan.
Life without end no promise is.
and demeans my time as man.
Glory is clothed in brevity,
and armor of shining acts.
I want an end to chivalry.
With Death I make a pact.
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Damn the automobile

2010-10-31T13:35:00.031-04:00

There are several examples of how this economy is organized and managed that earn the adjective stupid.
Let me cite one (because it is one of the most important): the automobile, the pollution-dispensing, oil-consuming money pit that we must have in order to live in this economy. Almost everyone must use a car to obtain whatever they need (food, clothing, education, medical care, etc.) and to do what they must do (work, play, visit, etc.).
Why is this so? Possibly General Motors and the Government felt it would be mutually beneficial and good for the postwar economy to build an interstate highway system. Of course, it was presented as necessary for National Defense. (Let's not forget that Ike's Secretary of Defense was "Engine" Charlie Wilson, former CEO of GM.)
If that sounds too conspiratorial for your taste, perhaps it was the working of "the unseen hand", that magical invisible property that moves the free market system described by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations.
Conspiracy or magic? Take your choice.

This massive concrete highway system destroyed the thousands of linked, self sufficient, full-service communities that made up the United States before 1950. It wasn't long before families knew they needed more than one car. Indeed, it wasn't long before they found that two cars weren't enough. After all, Father is working 50 miles away in an easterly direction. Mother is working twenty miles away in a northerly direction. Oldest son is working 35 miles away in a southerly direction. And all the stores have been moved out of town to a mall ten miles in a westerly direction.
Compounding the problem was the disappearance of a reliable extensive system of public transportation. Slowly but surely, railroad tracks disappeared, bus routes were curtailed, trolleys disappeared in nearly all cities that had them.
And thus did a freedom-loving America become dependent on the automobile.
But that isn't what we were told. No, we were all having "a love affair with our car". We were advised to "see the USA in our Chevrolet". Americans, it was said, looo-oved their car.
And today, my fellow Americans, when you are in one of those 14 lanes of backed-up traffic on the interstate at 6:00PM, moving at 15-20 mph, looking out over what James Kunstler sharply calls "automobile slums", praying there won't be a breakdown or accident, consider what we have done to ourselves. Are you still in love with your car? Are you seeing the USA? Is she beautiful and exciting? Not from where I'm sitting.

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Corporate Overreach

2010-10-29T15:42:00.000-04:00

The pricing of automobile repair is established by coded standards based on units of time. The labor costs based on these units of time are in excess of the actual time required. The system rounds upward the unit of time, usually in 15 minute increments. A 5 minute task will be charged 15 minutes. A 35 minute task will be charged 45 minutes. These charges start with a base labor cost of 60 minutes, due, I suppose, for the work required to start the process. Some call it a ‘hedge factor’ to offset possible losses in the estimate.

Added to these labor costs is the material cost of parts which is fixed at a straight 100% mark-up.

When the repairs are finished and billed, the customer finds at the bottom of the invoice, as a percentage of the subtotal for material and labor, a figure for ‘Shop Costs’, ie, rags, hand cleaner, paper floor mats, etc. This add-on percentage will run from 10% to 25% of the subtotal for material and labor.

I submit that the policy of coded pricing is a form of price control. I further submit that the Shop Cost add-on is passing the cost of normal overhead on to the customer. This is not free market capitalism. It is despotic capitalism and works only for the benefit of the corporate state.
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First Light

2010-10-23T06:42:00.004-04:00

From love-warm bed I rise
brushing cobwebs from my eyes,
going out to greet the dawn,
find doilies tatted on the lawn
where spiders spent the early hours
setting table for our flowers.

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I'm Just Saying....

2010-10-22T17:14:00.002-04:00

The free and secret ballot is the most important element of a political system. I believe voting should be thought of as serious and sacred and treated that way.
Early voting weakens that ritual.
I suppose there are a number of reasons why some states are taking this approach. It is more 'convenient' for many. There is no 'waiting' or 'wasting time in line'. It increases 'productivity' and this is 'good for the economy'. It makes life 'easier'.
And so it goes. Take the Latin from the Catholic mass. Don't honor Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays with holidays that may fall in the middle of the week. Honor all the Presidents (even the bad ones) with a Presidents Day. Make it always on a Monday so we don't interrupt the work week and affect 'productivity'. That's bad for the 'economy' too.
All this, I say, makes the sacred ordinary, the valuable cheap, the human character weak, the system soft.
Just sayin'....
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Facing It

2010-10-20T23:15:00.000-04:00

Everywhere I go I am confronted by how little I know. And then there is all that I have forgotten.
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Conundrum

2010-10-19T20:12:00.001-04:00

A child can be born to a set of good parents who are completely wrong for that child. As a result, much goes badly for the family.

A child can be raised to worship in a particular religion that is wrong for that child. As a result, the child, when mature, will struggle with questions of faith and belief.

Some children will never do well in school. Where modernization occurs, their lives become harder.

There is no place for blame in these instances. Nor can it be ascribed to Fate. It's luck, good or bad.

People like to say we are all the same. That's true, but it's not true.
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Quotation

2010-10-03T17:08:00.000-04:00

"Too much that we do is done at the expense of something else, or somebody else. There is some intransigent destructiveness in us. My days, though I think I know better, are filled with a thousand irritations, worries, regrets for what has happened and fears for what may, trivial duties, meaningless torments - as destructive of my life as if I wanted to be dead. Take today for what it is, I counsel myself. Let it be enough...We are in the habit of contention - against the world, against each other, against ourselves."

Another piece of common sense from Wendell Berry.
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A Senior's Letter To Her Bank

2010-10-01T17:10:00.000-04:00

Shown below is an actual letter that was sent to a bank by an 86 year old woman. The bank manager thought it amusing enough to have it published in the New York Times.

Dear Sir:
I am writing to thank you for bouncing my check with which I endeavored to pay my plumber last month. By my calculations, three nanoseconds must have elapsed between his presenting the check and the arrival in my account of the funds needed to honor it. I refer, of course, to the automatic monthly deposit of my entire pension, an arrangement which, I admit, has been in place for only eight years. You are to be commended for seizing that brief window of opportunity, and also for debiting my account $30 by way of penalty for the inconvenience caused to your bank. My thankfulness springs from the manner in which this incident has caused me to rethink my errant financial ways. I noticed that whereas I personally answer your telephone calls and letters, when I try to contact you, I am confronted by the impersonal, overcharging, pre-recorded, faceless entity which your bank has become.

From now on, I, like you, choose only to deal with a flesh-and-blood person. My mortgage and loan repayments will therefore and hereafter no longer be automatic, but will arrive at your bank, by check, addressed personally and confidentially to an employee at your bank whom you must nominate.

Be aware that it is an offense under the Postal Act for any other person to open such an envelope. Please find attached an Application Contact which I require your chosen employee to complete. I am sorry it runs to eight pages, but in order that I know as much about him or her as your bank knows about me, there is no alternative. Please note that all copies of his or her medical history must be countersigned by a Notary Public, and the mandatory details of his/her financial situation (income, debts, assets and liabilities) must be accompanied by documented proof. In due course, at MY convenience, I will issue your employee with a PIN number which he/she must quote in dealings with me. I regret that it cannot be shorter than 28 digits but, again, I have modeled it on the number of button presses required of me to access my account balance on your phone bank service. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Let me level the playing field even further. When you call me, press buttons as follows:

IMMEDIATELY AFTER DIALING, PRESS THE STAR (*) BUTTON FOR ENGLISH
#1. To make an appointment to see me
#2. To query a missing payment.
#3. To transfer the call to my living room in case I am there.
#4 To transfer the call to my bedroom in case I am sleeping
#5. To transfer the call to my toilet in case I am attending to nature.
#6.. To transfer the call to my mobile phone if I am not at home
#7. To leave a message on my computer, a password to access my computer is required. Password will be communicated to you at a later date to that Authorized Contact mentioned earlier.
#8. To return to the main menu and to listen to options 1 through 7.
#9. To make a general complaint or inquiry. The contact will then be put on hold, pending the attention of my automated answering service.
#10. This is a second reminder to press* for English. While this may, on occasion, involve a lengthy wait, uplifting music will play for the duration of the call.

Regrettably, but again following your example, I must also levy an establishment fee to cover the setting up of this new arrangement

Your Humble Client

(Remember: This was written by an 86 year old woman -'YA JUST GOTTA LOVE? US SENIORS" !!!!! )

And remember: Don't make old people mad. We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to set us off.

Werewolves are real

2010-09-28T15:42:00.000-04:00

The mythical werewolf is activated by phases of the moon. This is not an unreasonable proposition, unless you deny that tides are controlled by the moon, or that woman's menstrual cycle has a connection to lunar time.
The story of the werewolf is familiar. A friend, a neighbor, a family member becomes transformed into a wolf-like creature that attacks people unlucky enough to cross its path.
Adults don't believe in these creatures. But children do, and with good reason.
Many children have seen a loving and loved adult become a stranger who ravages them in differing ways, either physically, emotionally, or sexually. The beasts these children meet do not grow hair on the face and body, or have paws. But children see them as monsters. They frighten and they make the myth become real.
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Quotation

2010-09-27T17:34:00.000-04:00

"In every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Now who could disagree with that?
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Space and Motion Theory

2010-09-27T17:26:00.001-04:00

Many years ago I attended a lecture by the philosopher, H. Youngman. His ideas seemed slightly complex until he recited real-life examples of his theories. As well as I can remember them, I relate two of them here:

Firstly, Mr. Youngman described a visit to a rural college town and his experience with the room he rented at the one local hotel. He discovered the room was so small that when he put the key in the door, it broke the window.
Now, of course, we know this is not possible in any real sense yet we accept the concept of this space as described by Youngman for the power it has to make us laugh. The impossible size of the room becomes possible indeed, and he proves that space is relative in size to the need that it fills, and that the need that it fills is inversely proportional to the space it occupies.

Then Mr. Youngman addressed his ideas on the laws of motion by describing an experience in a restaurant. When the Maitre'd asked Youngman where he would like to sit, Youngman replied that he wants to be seated near a waiter.
The Maitre'd replied that this was not possible. If such a request could be met, it would mean that the waiter was stationary and therefore not moving and serving and waiting on his appointed tables as he should. Such a man would not be employed by any restaurant worthy of its name.
If, on the other hand, the waiter is a superior performer, then he is constantly on the move attending to the needs of the diners in his purview. This desirable motion, however, would make it very unlikely that Mr. Youngman's request could be fulfilled as the waiter he wants is not near the empty table that will be his place to be served.
Mr. Youngman went on to say that he had a wonderful dinner, and was well-served; that it lacked only a companion for discussion of paradoxes. Zeno, he said, yes, Zeno. He and I, Youngman said, could have retired to the lounge for some wine and delightful conversation. I would have liked that, Youngman said.
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